


weight of your world in my head

by doomteacosy



Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: Angst, Gen, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-06 17:13:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18392780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doomteacosy/pseuds/doomteacosy
Summary: It's the apocalypse; Abel has trauma seeping from every corner and no one sleeps peacefully. Waking up with a cold sweat sticking to your trembling limbs is nothing new.But guilt is not the only thing you walked away with, and no one wants to acknowledge it. Not even you.





	weight of your world in my head

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a whiiile (three years?) since I wrote this and honestly I don't remember writing it, but I think I just missed Sara, lol, and was having some feelings about Moonchild in Five's head? Some "haha, what a horrifying literal manifestation of trauma" feelings.
> 
> Admittedly, I was much more interested in head!Moonchild than I ever was the real Moonchild. Ah, the ghosts in Five's head.

It's the apocalypse; Abel has trauma seeping from every corner and no one sleeps peacefully. Waking up with a cold sweat sticking to your trembling limbs is nothing new.

But guilt is not the only thing you walked away with, and no one wants to acknowledge it. Not even you. 

At night you claw awake, a whisper in your ear and hands still ghosting through your hair. The memory of a smile on your lips and warmth in your chest. 

_Smile for me, Five. You're so beautiful when you smile._

(You miss the way Sara's eyes would meet yours at night when you'd wake from a nightmare. The way her words would be just as sharp the next morning, but her smile just a little softer. Her eyes a little sadder. You think you could talk about this with her. Even if she wasn't actually there. But she's gone.)

-

She used to braid your hair.

It was a practical concern the first time, stuck waiting in the field with Sara, who watched your messy attempts to do it yourself with growing disdain. 

"I _know_ you know how to do this yourself,” she growled, but there was an amused twist to her lips. 

But after it became something else. A ritual. A piece of home. 

Sara Smith sitting on the floor, a story on her lips and a laugh in her eyes, braiding your hair as if she were a girl at a slumber party. Who would even believe you?

When you first joined Moonchild you watched her braid her own hair and underneath the white noise you could hear Sara echoing in your head. Moonchild took the way you watch her hands as longing, as invitation. She hummed as her fingers carded through your hair and you weren't even enough yourself to understand that she was destroying one more thing for you.

-

You try to lose yourself in books, and reports, and the few missions Janine will let you run. 

You think about the old days. When Sara would sit across from you, all sharp edges and wry smiles and something sincere and warm under it all. When Sam saw you as a friend, before you lost him to a distance that had started before Moonchild dug her claws into you. When Simon's secrets hadn't pulled him too far away for teasing smiles as comforts.

Now you’re alone. And for the longest time that stings, until suddenly you're not alone enough.

-

You feel like you're going mad. Desperate to hear something. Desperate to _not_.

And maybe you are. Maybe you already were.

-

You want to shed your skin.

You want to sleep until some new crisis can distract you from the echoes in your mind.

You think screaming until your throat was raw might make your chest loosen up enough for you to take a single breath. Enough for you to sit down and actually feel the pain and loss of the last couple years that burns along your every nerve as you push it all down, down, down. Instead you choke on your silent laugh. Instead you stare down at the locks of hair that litter the floor and wish it was enough, and all the while a voice tuts in your ear.

You don't want her in your head again, reaching into every nook and cranny until you can't tell what's you and what's not. You don't want to be reminded of feeling nothing but a muffled euphoria as she tells you to aim your gun at friends and allies. You didn't want to be alone with your thoughts, but not like this.

You miss Sara.

You _miss Sara_. And now you've lost her twice.

-

You go to the moonlit track while Abel sleeps around you and run, and run, and run.


End file.
